see your face hear my voice in the dark
by wildestsdreams
Summary: By the time the sun came up they still had not run out of smiles to share and laughs to infect each other with. / snowbarry


_sooo this is a snowbarry fic i posted last december on ao3 and it was set in Christmas. it's still fine though even if we're nearing summer (in my country, at least.) _

_it's in an au where there is no particle accelerator. iris and eddie are together, barry never found out about star labs, and caitlin never actually met ronnie. set about a week before Christmas. unbeta'd as always. sorry about the typos and grammar errors, if there are any._

_the title is a lyric from 'i wish you would' by taylor swift._

* * *

Barry wasn't too enthusiastic about having to babysit Eddie's 9-year old nephew.

It went like this: Eddie's brother was going on an overnight business trip, and said brother wanted Eddie to look after his son. Coincidentally, Eddie was going to be so busy that day. A date with Iris, cases to look into, this and that. And so he came to Barry for help.

In any other time and place Barry would have politely declined, saying he had stuff of his own to do (when in reality he took a day off just because), but Eddie just had to come with Iris, who, having lived with Barry for the past 10 years, can catch every single lie that comes out of Barry's mouth. So here he is, in a stranger's house stuck with a petulant and restless 9-year-old.

At some point before 6 PM, there was a knock on the door. Barry couldn't help but hope for it to be Iris and Eddie telling him he's free to go, but he had hoped wrong. There was a small person—could this be? A duplicate of Eddie's nephew. Equally annoying and jumpy, but Barry had to keep that to himself.

"Um… Who are you?" he asked, befuddled as he watched the kid run into the house past him and onto the couch where the other boy was seated, watching reruns of an animated show.

Barry turned back to the door to see if the new kid came with anyone, and he was surprised to see a girl probably his age with a cute expression on her face and pretty eyes and cascading curls of brown hair…

"Hey, um, sorry…" the girl trailed off upon seeing Barry, but snapped out of her short reverie almost as quick as she came into it. "Uh, sorry about him. He, uh, I was forced to come here with him. He," the girl gestures to Eddie's nephew, "wanted to have him over until tomorrow."

* * *

"Oh. Sure… Come in."

As Barry and the girl- Caitlin, she had told him-stood by the couch awkwardly, the show the two children were watching finally ended. They started jumping and running and doing kid stuff that released their energy.

"I'm gonna go get something to drink," Barry announced, the chaos in the room making his head spin.

He returned to the living room from the kitchen to see Caitlin sitting on the sofa, watching a Christmas movie with the two restless kids.

"How did you get them to sit still like that?" Barry said in awe, holding two mugs of hot chocolate.

"Magic," she said, walking over to where Barry was, and leaving the two on the couch fighting over whether Santa actually is real or not. (Barry stopped believing in Santa since he lost his mother. They told him he could give any gift a child would ask for, but he couldn't bring Barry's mother and father back home.)

Barry handed one mug over to Caitlin. After she thanked him, "So… Do you do this all the time? Babysit annoying children as they have fun annoyingly?"

The corner of Caitlin's lip quirked up slightly as she told him no. "I only did this because his mom, who is my sister, is on a holiday. You?"

"No, I am not good with little people!" he replied, "His parents were on a business trip."

"Business trip? A week before Christmas?"

"Yeah, I guess. It's a long story," he shrugged.

* * *

"And then I told her that she was Copper and Tellurium. She thought I was insulting her! She had no idea that I was trying to tell her she was cute . I mean, Copper is Cu and Tellurium is Te. Well, you probably knew that, but we were in fifth grade and she didn't and... You should have seen her face!"

The slight smile on Caitlin's lips and the occasional eye-rolling Barry gets from her makes up the amused expression on her face that Barry coerced out of her strong, persistent shell with stories that only a handful of people would be entertained with.

The digital clock on the table by the couch shined 2:47 AM. Caitlin and Barry were no longer on the couch, now in a pile of blankets on the floor, sipping their hundredth mugs of hot chocolate. The TV was still on, nearing the ending of a 60s Christmas movie as Barry kept telling Caitlin his stories.

It was only a matter of time when Caitlin decided to talk about her life too, and Barry was equally amused as she was with his life. They were only interrupted by each other- "Wait, don't tell me what your dog actually ate yet! I'm gonna get another mug of coffee!" or "Before you tell me about that time you almost set your school's chem lab on fire, do you wanna get more blankets?" -and the stories went on like an endless stream of water.

* * *

At one point Barry reached out to touch her cheek. "Eyelash," he said.

"That's the oldest-"

"Oldest trick in the book, yeah, I know," he said, lightly laughing, "But there really was an eyelash."

* * *

By the time the sun came up they still had not run out of smiles to share and laughs to infect each other with, and when the two boys Barry and Caitlin had initially planned on looking after woke up, what welcomed them in the living room was quiet- comforting, even.

The static on the TV screen let out low humming; the two mugs on the floor are filled with a drink that was still hot; there were two tired young people on the floor in a pile of blankets who seemed to be sleeping contentedly. Barry was leaning on the sofa and Caitlin's head was resting on his shoulder.

In the future they didn't look after children and spend time in the early hours of the morning together anymore- it was just the two of them and it was in any time of the day and night.


End file.
